


The Philosophical Prince

by MaviWeasleyJr



Category: Intelligence (Canada TV), Philosophy RPF
Genre: Gen, Logic and Philosophy Week, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaviWeasleyJr/pseuds/MaviWeasleyJr
Summary: In a world where wisdom it's the key to become a king, Edwin Burton decides to take his mind further beyond his age, after his dad being killed by the Cleverous soldiers, he dares to face and comprehend what is arrogance and rudeness. With himself in trouble, he runs to the wrong place, meeting different worlds apart. There, he met the genius people who had somehow changed the world.Harold Tomlinson as only a friend, gets worried with Edwin and the situation of the Queen, Annora Dalton, young and wise, take her mother's heir who properly fought through years to reach that place.Matthew Cox, young and lovable, never expected to join this adventure, but the future is surprisingly unexpected.
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [All](https://archiveofourown.org/users/All/gifts).



**_"This work goes to all open-minded people._ **

**_Forsooth, to all my dark academia friends, who I immensely love."_ **

**_"And lastly, my parents who created me ;)"_ **

****


	2. Kill His Soul, Kill His Body

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Put your earbuds and listen to some music 🎼:) cuz this chapter will be long.

The wind gusted through the branches of the trees; blowing little flakes that measured would impact into the frosty ground covered with snow. The wintry weather had brought its raw thickness, but the comfort emotion, the snow that beyond the village scoped the forest making it become genuinely delightful as if neither monsters nor celestial creatures dwelled upon there. Tracks made by their feet were swept away by the wind, disappearing along with birds. The dreary day was frightening and murderous, seemed void, but his ears could hark the caustic whispers coming from the end of the corridor of his house. His left hand firmly held the red curtain and his eyes never sneaked a look back to confront what was behind. Nothing there would be amusing as much as the daintily snow falling outside.

His other hand tingled and his brows knitted, making his face crinkle in bewilderment, his chapped lips that implored for water moved quickly, his mind still not wholly believing in the story, counted from one to ten, hoping the words to become a falsehood.

_One, two, three._

But the man did not come back to tell it was a joke.

_Four, five, six._

As a clock, he imagined the sound of the tick tock going around his head, putting more pressure against his back.

_Seven, eight, nine._

And to mutter the last numbers, his lids shut, surveying the black. He signed deeply, his sorrowfulness was already conspicuous to anyone among his miserable life.

_Ten._

His body had completely whirled to watch the walls shrunk as his steps went towards the door, which its doorknob wasn't favoring him. He twirled it again and tried to focus on the wood path ahead, but his vision was blurred by the tears he held. The strong urge to cry when his arms supported him touching the wall to not topple over, the urge was necessary, so he could once and for all apprehend the truth. The men waiting in the living room spotted their friend, bowing down their heads respectfully. Edwin had reached one of them, curling his fingers roughly around his shoulders.

"Tell me this is a lie!" he curtly demanded, holding him tightly.

The friends of his felt sorry for the words they had to repeat and the way his brown eyes with a mix of light green no longer shined, his melancholy gesture sufficed them to not dare to perish his heart again. The pain had been spread, there was no way to escape from the eerily tension.

"I'm sorry, Edwin, but it's true." The man thrilled off, with his mind scanning the next words cautiously. "The person's dead."

Edwin let his chin fall off opening his mouth to jabber readily. "No! It is-" but shut, realizing there were no words that existed to be told, explained and understood.

A death is a death, and nothing he could do would change the person's fate. The deceased body was rotting and the person's soul waving goodbye, what had befallen, he'd knew nothing would stay forever as nothing would last narrowly, that they had their time, and didn't savvy if they were in the middle of their story or at the end. Possibly they would never bethink about their last words, but about their firsts, and how much the meaning could impact in their children's lives. Edwin acknowledged all of that, and for that reason he didn't trust in the time, it could betray every foolish brain who did not attempt to stay awake to observe the changes of a person who slowly inched away, indeed, died.

"Please, take me there, where everything happened." his murmur called the attention of the charming group, the men who gave oddly looks at each other and slightly nodded.

Harold drifted away, leisurely taking Edwin's hands off his body. The more the silence was settled in, the more painful his facial expressions became. An old visitant that didn't please anyone, its presence was unavoidable and unwanted. The mourning that was prepared to accompany their thoughts every significant minute and the cold that would never flicker out, it would turn Edwin's life even more depressing.

Wiping the tears off, he knitted his brows when Harold walked speedily towards the doors that guided them out of home. The house made of solid wood inside and impenetrable bricks outside, which with one wolf's blow would never collapse, were what he called home. The room wide open, but warmly cozy as the fire kept crackling in the fireplace. A calmly place for the readers who in the night would insist to keep leafing through an old and delightful story, but soon fall sleep with their heads on the table. He was thirsty for knowledge, despite looking arrogant, selfish and wise, he had also doubts, and might be only wanting a straight answer for his eerily questions, but who would do it for him if he was the one living a love story with the wisdom?

All the men went after the lads, hearing the neighing of the white horses. Edwin and Harold mounted on them, grabbing the reins firmly. The grip had to be forcefully, so none of them would clash into the frosty ground. But unfortunately, Edwin had no might, his feeble arms and his body shaking wouldn't help him to do one movement. Harold, fixating his friend, patted his back trying to console, making Edwin force a thinly smile, and so the horses began to run fast, with their paws trampling the ground brutally, the wind was roughly against his cheeks as his mouth dried. Harold tried to hold his hat, but let go of it, cursing himself with his mind. The blond long hair tangled when it swayed, and the blue eyes saw the small houses, the people who lived in the poverty, the village of no love, no money. They didn't linger to reach the place they anxiously hunted, when the patches of blood sliding on the icy white and the frozen body of a starved person locked with their eyes, Edwin shoved the reins nimbly making the horse neigh and rear, and then it stopped, obeying the man upon him that whistled. He got off the horse, falling in the snow, and like a shot leaping to his feet, the horde shuffled out of his way as if he was an uncommonly mischievous person.

He beheld a person who fought against the darkness, but mercilessly failed when attempting to be a great man. The scrawny body, destroyed against a tree, having hideous curves, but an exclusively beautiful collarbone that belonged to a dead soul. The dirty red-hair and the thin lips. An image of himself, as if he was surveying a mirror. And with the flames burning all his shame, he himself shed one tear, then two, and as the both sides of his face began to feel wet, Edwin leaned closer, entwining his arms around his father. He embraced the last hours, minutes and seconds, the last father and son moment while he could. Enough tears to make his own river, enough pain to be his own torment. His heart was too sensitive that any word against his father, would shatter it into sharp pieces.

A hand gripped his right shoulder, and Edwin didn't need to look to know it was Harold.

Friends since an old childhood, brothers until now. They well-loved and trusted in one another. Sometimes they'd fight, but when opening their lids to see the light of the sun in the next day, they'd be laughing together again, but the harsh fights still existed, until, without notice, their loyalty caved in. Collapsed like never a memory was made in their life. Harold darted himself to the other way, since teenager hearing the shrinkage of girls as he walked by while Edwin latched himself inside his house, reading stories that weren't genuinely true. In summer, Harold started to spend more time with his parents, and every confusion happened when they were only fifteen.

Edwin observed attentively as his mother would go and come to work. Never sensed of what she worked or who she was, even though the prudently kisses she'd give him before bedtime, demonstrated how much she loved and cared about him, but who said it was the answer of the question _'who are you?'_ Every night she'd read a book to her son, under the snugly blanket of a cold and traitorous night, startling himself when a sound was emitted. Fervently, she would open the book, wading through it and reading the philosophical words to Edwin land an ear. And one day, she never came back, but he assumed that on the spur of the moment, she would soon arrive.

And he brutally stopped when his swollen eyes had no more tears to express how much dejected he was. He fixated his eyes on his father and leisurely drew closer to give him a kiss in his forehead.

"I'm sorry, Dad." He sorrowfully whispered, withdrawing from the cold and stinky body. Getting up to his feet, avoiding him with his eyes. "I do not fear death, indeed, there's nothing wrong with it. If he knows he's a good man, he knows his place is with God, in Heaven, and things there are better than this world could ever be! And will never!" Edwin ruthlessly increased the tone of his voice. "These stupid humans who killed him! These cold-hearted soldiers! I hate them, all of them!"

"Edwin! Weren't the Cleverous soldiers who killed him! Was depression!" Harold observed, with his voice failing. His heart beat faster and harder, swallowing hard the tension he'd made.

As a knife stabbing a heart, his frozen body refused to move towards any direction and tardily, his feet sunk in the snow. Utterly incapacitated to split his lips and emit a sound, the flakes huddled in his lashes, and his vision blurred. With his darken eyes as a sphere, he immediately mounted his horse, and lastly, glanced at Harold who lowered his head sleepily. Terrified of looking at his father's face, he tightened the reins and launched himself with the horse out of the horde people were causing to settle, already startled, they became stupefied with what he had done.

He wasn't going far away, with the horse running further, a little bit more and his eyes found the dark wooden cabin, which always gave the dread to the villagers that the person who lived in the home was terribly wicked. But for him, the cabin reminded him of what he would call a home of no return, a home where he could never touch his toe again, because he wasn't welcome, but still well received. Gliding down of the animal, he pondered of his thoughts. ' _Is it good idea to knock on the door? Is this what I really want?'_ he obtained no answers, but incredulous doubts. Couldn't trust in them and neither in himself.

"I was waiting for you." The female voice crossed his ears, and the door he did not wish to have unlocked, had opened by itself.

He surveyed her white hair when the passage was safely seen and wide, so that he could soon enter her sweet home. When she docilely smiled, her wrinkle skin seemed to age quickly. He also studied the way she couldn't walk correctly. Her steps were the slowest he had ever seen, and the cane she held didn't seem to improve her posture. The dim light illuminated few parts of the place, gladly, he still could spot the armchair. And from the next step he gave, himself was present in a comfortable room, large and magical. His ears had the pleasure to hear eerily noises as songs, and when lifting his head up, he observed the walls were covered with portraits of the headmasters and headmistress, all of them grinned. His eyes glinted in the lights. It was a marvelous chamber to dwell with. With his finger scrubbing up the dirt that didn't exist in the enormous bookcases, with novels and collections. She had so many books, and all of them seemed to tell an odd story.

"I know he's dead."

He cleaned his throat when hearing her words. Imploring inside to not start bawling disorderly again.

"Depression."

She gathered what he, heartrending, announced. And in surprised, her smile went wider, fussing him mentally. A smile wasn't what he expected, undoubtedly, what no one waited for. He wanted to see her crying, with her heart being torn apart.

"Grandma?" He lowly said.

She ruminated on what she'd be telling him in the next seconds. If the words would distress him too much or if he would brood over and continue the conversation with her. Assured that at 25, he was mature enough to handle the tension, she split her lips to start:

"These people can't find help because they don't want. Feelings and actions are made by our own, and we are the only capable to change what we think and what we are. Depression has cure, but we, humans, have also a brain and with this brain we can seek for cognition of what is making us suffer, what did cause it, and when the begging of this sad story started. We can control those traumas using the brain. We do need therapy, but they're expensive, however we can be our own help and our own way to get out of this little box we made to keep ourselves hidden from the world." She unmercifully began, dropping his heart to a deeper length of sorrowfulness, and then addressing herself to a desk.

He watched as her hand lowered and seconds later lifted up to wear the glasses.

"I believe we don't need people to heal us when actually this kind of humanity was the one who hurt our feelings and destroyed our bones." Edwin continued, with his body sprawling and cozily watering down in the armchair.

She nodded, brutally opening a drawer and laying hold of a heart-shaped box. "And by seeking for answers it will take days, months, nay years, but if there is an answer, you can see there's a question. Killing himself was never present there, killing ourselves reveal how much weak we are, because those who had fought for many years and won this battle, can successfully tell the story of their dark times, of how they couldn't stand up or sleep without crying all night for feeling stupid and worthlessly. We've came to earth to live and die, but surely this death is not meant to arrive by us, but by ages of living enough until our skin wrinkle. A person who does not look for aim or does not want to live, is a person who does not know how to love nor smile, is a person who deceived his own brain to think that happiness must not exist. But why? Why?! Why such sorrowful thoughts? Might the answer be clear: "Nothing makes me happy, nothing makes me cheerful!" Her hands suddenly held a needle and a black sewing thread.

And Edwin silently observed her mysterious spectacle going on.

"I'm sorry for those who lost, and I'm sorry for those who will lose, my problem it's that I use the imagination to think about the future, to escape from thoughts of killing me, not the logic, it might be nonsense, but my imagination it's what brings happiness, where I'm lonely, and blissfully dancing, but if I use the logic, it will bring me the world, and the world is, unfortunately, a sad thing to coexist and it will grieves me, perhaps make me run back to my little box, but... When I see people smiling and showing their happiness, I think I can possess this too, you know, nothing it's impossible and Dad should've known it since the start, that it's possible to find light in a place darker than his heart, it's possible to grin through tears, that it's possible to run back home and dance! Jump! And laugh alone. He should've known that everything among us, are things that are ready to hurt us, to bring us down, but may I ask! Would it be impossible to tell apart sadness from happiness if we don't feel them both someday?" Edwin suspiciously carried on with the chattering. Attempting to get all his observation to her, and not his father, or everything would all be flooded by his tears at some point.

"He should've remembered that everything passes if he let the train goes on, by the way, we wouldn't know the true taste of victory, if we don't eat the dust after being defeated." The thread was lastly embedded between the hole at the tip of the needle. She knotted the two ends and started sewing, what looked like a piece of a black cloth. "Again, depression has cure, but we have hearts, we have brains, even if we don't know how to use it properly, this can beat all the sadness down. And in my point of view, my beliefs, the only think that can cure it, it's wisdom, and we don't need anyone to seek it, we just need ourselves. And what if it's ourselves who brings us down? Then escape, run, change yourself, change everything you acknowledge, be someone new you never thought you could become. When happiness comes, embrace it, MARRY it and when sorrowfulness comes again, embrace it with kindness, understanding it, controlling it. But about this conversation, shall only psychologists apprehend and clarify."

"Tell him this after what he committed, what you call suicide." Edwin feeling dumbfounded by the way she acted, stood up, relaxing his shoulders and singing inside his head. _'Don't cry, don't cry, and don’t let your tears die.'_

"Am I wrong?"

His eardrums felt sorry of himself for having to listen to her voice. Instantaneously, he had an anger rising inside his chest. Well, sadness always brought its ally, the anger. "He didn't kill himself! He was being killed by people! He was already dead inside! The world killed him!"

"A weak soul is a dumb soul." She calmly said, no longer concerned about what her grandson was feeling.

"You call every person dumb. I am dumb! He is dumb! My mother, who I haven't seen in years, is dumb!"

"Yes you are, they are, and I am."

"I'm merrily glad you know yourself enough to admit it." Ignorance exuded from Edwin's hissing.

"We all know, we are dumb. No one is wise enough, but a person can be so dumb at the point of killing himself." Her hand maintained still, humming a song as her head slightly swayed.

"They aren't dumb for killing themselves, indeed, are the people who have the most intriguing story to tell, the most beautiful story to hear, and the most terrifying to execute. My father was never stupid for killing himself; I would say he was even clever for escaping from this stupid world we live in."

"Are you calling them intelligent? People who kill themselves are intelligent for you?" She wanted to scoff at him.

"I didn't mean that way."

"Then what is intelligence for you? Intelligence needs love, but killing your own self isn't an act of love, it's an act of hate, and I'm sure, hatred is dumb." She raised an eyebrow.

Edwin sat down again and when forming his sentence in the blink of an eye, he soon began to explain it:

"Intelligence is nothing without love. Curiosity guides us into the unknown that hardly you end up loving, and when loving it, you study more about it, bringing into your life something different that perhaps only you and few people acknowledge.  
I call it intelligence."

"Now tell me. If intelligence brings us something different that few of us know, why would death be one of them, if everyone knows it? If knowing little is clever for you, then why death is in between your options?" Her questions made him even more irritated because she was being a fair shrewd person.

"Death is still a little thing to me, and people do not know how to use it. Chiefly the people who dare to kill themselves, they don't know the meaning of death. So become a little knowledge, because only few people know how to use it properly." He finished pronouncing his corny clarification.

"It's not 'use', but experience. We have possession of what we use, but death possesses us." She pitiless corrected him. "Well, I see your point, but it's still wrong to think that it's _intelligent_ to die. Death is only experienced properly when the person waits for it, and not run to reach it. There are many things that can keep us alive, and when we don't find them, we make up the reasons by ourselves. However, keep going."

Leisurely, he nodded and clenched his teeth. Perhaps he was mistaken when trying to prove his point to a woman who had lived more than he did. Settling down his hands together on his lap, he stroked the other with a thumb and softened his facial expressions.

"Without love, we'd be surely dumb in my point of view. Einstein had said something equal about it. "Love it's the most supreme and stronger teacher we'll always have." Indeed, he's absolutely and, without shadow of doubt, correct. With love we can learn everything we want, need and wish alone. Perhaps, without love the world would be completely destroyed because I'm sure, we, stupid humans being, CARE of what we love." He sighed, peering down to see the carpet that seemed to be dermis of a brown bear, and then proceeded. "Ignorance is a trait of dumbness, people are wholly sure they cannot open the doors of their minds to understand other's opinion." He stopped so he could hear her raspy voice agreeing. "We dwell upon something big, something full of people and believe me, I guarantee all of them have brains, different beliefs and conclusions, I also shall not forget, colors and sexualities."

"Look where you stopped. From death to opinions. Is it fair to express an opinion on how someone wants to die?"

The questions she inquired always surprised him. Mrs. Burton often acted like a child who, upon hearing his parents' conversation, would ask the meaning of all the words. But she was inquiring the questions that within a second, would know the answers without needing to be answered.

"No, but it's fair to try to help that person. I do not wish a sorrowful ending to anyone." Edwin managed to think quickly, so that the eerily silence would not suffocate him, he said what he thought. "Not being intelligent enough will lead you to conflicts you thought you didn't cause. There's an army of them and no matter who the person is, he or she shall respect, even if it's AGAISNT their instincts or otherwise the army will come after them like rats looking for cheese. Having no power won't stop them from fighting for their rights, but having no faith and hope will make them collapse and choke with their own tears."

"Death. Opinions. Rights. Faith. A depressed person wishes death, he has an opinion and surely rights. But is faith what he misses?" Mrs. Burton started again, stopping the sewing to stare at the man behind her.

"Faith is needed in everyone's life, faith in what you believe you get, as well as living, is accurate." He told her, caressing his chin as he bit his lips.

"So would you blame your father for having no faith?"

"A person doesn't kill himself for what he doesn't possess, but for what he thinks. The problem isn't with possessing, but with the thinking. A depressed person doesn't care about what he owns, but care of why he thinks he's unworthy, witless and ugly. And now I come to tell that the other problem is words. There live wicked humans among us, humans who will bash us down to make them blissfully joyful. And to be worse, our mind feeds these thoughts more and more, which has no sense because all they want is the judgments to stop coming back, but no, they're there, exclusively watching our deceased body rotting."

Edwin did not comprehend half of his words, but as he spoke, everything seemed to be different. His brain seemed to turn on the pondering machine that made him feel clever. Mrs. Burton agreed once again to his lecture, boastfully joyful of her grandson and his wisdom in the little things, she jabbered out:

"The mind is a mysterious place to live, and a murderous house to visit."

He nodded, agreeing with her. Though they never had time to be together, they had things that could be compared to, and then given the same answer, they had common agreements and visions of the vast of their world. She was consistently far away, and when passing by, close to him, did not desire his touch and kisses. Recalling his wistfully childhood, he frequently never found her in his photography memory, not even birthdays were significant to her. And for all that, Edwin wished he could spit on her face pouring out that not even for a moment he needed her to become someone independent, that his mother and father were proudly enough to make him a man of respect, and that by living among her, his ignorance would assuredly become greater. And only for that, he was immensely grateful she didn't put a finger on him as he was growing up.

"In my perspective we're like the ocean to the universe. We know too much about the universe that is outside, but quite nothing about the depth of the ocean that is inside. The more deep we go, the more the pressure of water pulls and drowns us. We get lost inside ourselves. But when it comes to the universe, the higher you go, the lighter things seem to get, and gravity will not exist and what is outside, can be seen, so we don't need to worry about it, but I'm sure we don't know that much of what roams the seabed. Do you understand what this is about?"

"Of course I do." She whirled her body to sew once more the black cloth, with her tongue clicking as she adjusted the glasses. "We never know too much of us, but we know too much of them. See that we only realize if we're fine or bad when someone asks _'How are you'._ Because we're not fully thinking of ourselves, but we're thinking about what's going on with the outside. That's why I believe people take years to define themselves and don't find who they truly are. By not knowing that your attention was not entirely focused on you, which is the bottom of the ocean, you do not realize how broken your bones are, and what your stupid thoughts generate. One tear caused by the outside world, which would be the universe, is enough to realize how depressed you are."

"So you're telling me, Dad had not the attention totally centered in who he was?" Knitting his eyebrows, Edwin wondered if he also had all his attention centered in himself, if things were out of his organization and he didn't have fully control of it.

"Oh, he was man of work. Was working all the time, you could ask what he was doing and he'd sing: work, work, work. And when at home, relaxing his body, he would rest. But he never worked for himself, his mental health never worked within his body. Do not ask me why he was suffering, because life was not his, who controlled it was his boss."

He glanced at the bookcases that were all standing in a straight line, and observed the consolatory dim lights from the lamps again. He was there, not remembering how he had stopped in such a distance place from his home. It should have been somnambulating for nothing to bethink, nor the steps he gave to feel the frosty ground. Mrs. Burton strangely disappeared, just when his mind had lost its own world. The eyelids of his eyes closing, but his breath always frightened himself, he was raving mad. Didn't know what time was, nay the year, but he'd knew he was solitary, not dealt with people. The trees that rattled outside, dancing in the wind that blew north or south, bringing the worst in the air. The knock they owe him on the head, the noise that amazed him. Agonized, petrified, sweating as his fingers curled crumpling his clothes.

"Edwin?" She questioningly called him. "Are you lost in your world again?"

When he heard an anguished cry from the outside, forced his body to briskly jump off the chair. Alarmed, his eyes casted on Mrs. Burton who kept her face exaggeratedly furrowed.

"Despite myself not agreeing with all theories, I'd walk in a mud to have a real conversation with them. I see our beautifully world caving it, I watch as people, without hesitation, destroy our home, perishing the only world with life." Was the last sentence he had declared before scurrying away.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're in doubt, the next chapter is when the story really starts.


End file.
